Fireball

Rather than Fireball: Muay Thai Dunk, this could have been more aptly titled as Firebrawl: Anything Goes, and I mean that in a nice way. We know enough of how sports and martial arts can coexist in movies, either in comical fashion like Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer, or played in a more deadpan, idol-movie like manner with the Jay Chou vehicle Kung Fu Dunk. Joining their ranks is this latest action film directed by Thanakorn Pongsuwan, which fuses an illegal underground basketball league, and Muay Thai fighting.

For those who want to organize their own tournament, here are the extremely simple rules as explained in the movie. It's your standard 5 on 5 basketball on a full length court, except that when the whistle blows, you can brawl with your opponent immediately, which makes it something like a WWE Royal Rumble, only faster and more brutal. To win, you still have to put the ball into your opponent's goal/basket (it's still basketball after all), but it only takes one dunk to win. Either that, or the team with the last man standing will be the victor. Killing your opponent is allowed, but only within the court (anything outside equals to punishment for the team), but there's no replacement players allowed as you progress through the stages. Which means survivors get to split more cash between them, but suffer from numerical disadvantage. Weapons are optional too.

Which makes the film perfect as an all out actioner, and Pongsuwan doesn't think twice about indulging the audience into detailed, well executed fights which take precedence over a decent game of basketball. While watching the film I felt it was a throwback to the 80s Bloodsport type of movie with gladiators battling in an arena, sans plot and character development, where the focus is to let the fists and feet do most of the talking. That said, the fight sequences were nicely shot and tightly choreographed, though it seemed more like an all-out street brawl than sticking to Muay Thai principles. Fans of hard-hitting action will definitely appreciate the ring-side seat to all of the action here, which is relentless in pace and powerful in execution.

Story-wise, it tells of the tale of Tai (Preeti Barameeanat), who has recently been released from prison because twin brother Tan got him out of jail by raising required funds for bribery, but at the price of fighting for his life in a coma at the hospital. Tai learns from Tan's main squeeze Pang (Khanutra Chuchuaysuwan), who provides a cursory and unnecessary romantic angle, that Tan often got himself badly knocked up, and discovers that his twin was actually knocked comatose by an opponent in a Fireball tournament. So like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, Tai adopts Tan's identity, and finds himself looking for a team to join for the tournament, seeking revenge.

Enter Boss Den (Phutharit Prombandal), who recruits Tai's Tan into his Fireball team, led by captain and best fighter of the lot Zing (9 Million Sam, yes you read that right!), with Muk (Kumpanat Oungsoongnern), K (Anuwat Saejao) and teenager IQ (Kannut Samerjai) as the rag-tag, hastily assembled team with trust issues amongst one another, and personal issues, each from the doldrums of society, mercenaries for hire if you like, eyeing that prize money at the end of the rainbow in order to lift their lot. Throw in some match-fixing potential, which is de-facto in any underground fights, and nasty opponents with no qualms for un- sportsmanship behaviour, and you're all set for a non-stop action film where the drama in between becomes an excuse to glue the multi-faceted fight scenarios together. One of the best involves a training sequence where the boys play a friendly in and around a narrow and cramped apartment block, resembling a parkour-yamakasi piece.

Given knowledge that a prequel will be made, I can't help but to think that this film could end up as the "middle" movie, since it ended the way it did with doors opened for a sequel, and of course the story of Tan provides ample room for scenes before the opening shot here. The players too are likely to be similar for the prequel, and it could follow John Woo's A Better Tomorrow where you can bring back the key actor from the excuse that we're looking at the twin / likeness resembling relative, which this film had all set up, and set subsequent movies back in time too.

That said, as a basketball-type movie, Fireball would not muster any merit for lay-ups and slam dunks. But as an action film, then yes, it will satisfy any action junkie who misses the good old days of no holds barred fights, multiplied by the number of players on the court all happening at the same time.

Tai (Preeti Barameeanat) is released from jail, all charges dropped, his brother Tan (also played by Barameeanat) having greased some palms with cash earned playing the violent street sport Fireball. After Tai arrives home to discover his brother in a coma, badly bruised and beaten, he enters the Fireball arena to try and find the person responsible, while earning some cash to pay for a much-needed operation.

Thai martial arts movie Fireball (AKA Muay Thai Dunk) revolves around an illegal tournament in which two teams of five men battle it out on a basketball court, maiming and killing their opponents while trying to score a single basket. As such, I wasn't expecting much in the way of a gripping (or logical) storyline—and I didn't get one. I was, however, expecting some decent fight scenes—a bit of bone crunching, adrenaline fuelled action, as the quote on the DVD cover promised—but I didn't get that either.

Director Thanakorn Pongsuwan seems to have gone out of his way to reduce every potentially exciting scene to an incomprehensible mess through the use of wobbly camera-work and rapid editing. There are several lengthy Fireball matches, but it is virtually impossible to work out who is punching or kicking who, making the film an extremely frustrating (and utterly boring) experience. In between the 'action', Pongsuwan pads out the running time with cloying emotional drama, but since I couldn't care less about any of his horribly clichéd characters, this did nothing to help improve my opinion of the film as a whole.

So bad it makes the barely above average Kung Fu Dunk (2008) look like a work of pure genius by comparison, I have no reservations in giving Fireball the lowest possible rating of 1/10.

I hate when you watch a film that not only feels like a waste of time but when you lament that time could have been spent elsewhere from watching a better film or cleaning the toilet. I knew not to expect an Ong Bak or a Chocolate. Also, I recently enjoyed the Legend of the Tsunami Warrior which was not a great film, but you can see the maturity of the Thailand popular cinema in terms of special effects and film techniques so I was curious on this film. Sometimes curiosity is dangerous.

Many times when you are watching a martial arts film (sometimes this goes with musicals as well) you can forgive an inane plot, idiotic characterizations and pretty much everything else if the fight scenes are sagacious. Usually when they are not it is because you are presented with actors (and/or choreographers) who know nothing about showcasing the proper aesthetics and the artistic ability to convey the beauty that makes martial art cinema great. Sometimes, like in this film, the actors have the martial arts ability, but it is the director, editor and cinematographer that help make this film an irritable exercise in how long can you sit at a time while watching this before you change and watch something else. I can forgive the film quality which has the feel of a low budget TV movie. I cannot forgive (besides the plot) the elliptical editing, the cinematography which seems to be done by a 300 pound ex-alcoholic after running a mile who is suffering delirium tremens, and the soundtrack with exception of the cool Thai rap heard early in the film. Honestly, I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish with the editing. Were they trying to outdo Michael Bay?

The plot was not much better. Here we have Tai (Preeti Barameeanat) a criminal who was set free because of his twin brother's Tan's (same actor) cash contributions that left Tan in a coma. Tan was making money with the underground basketball game called Fireball. Tai takes his identity and gets back into the game to find out who was responsible for his brother's condition as well as try to make money to pay for an operation for his deteriorating brother. In the meantime he is falling for his brother's girlfriend. I like the idea of having an underground basketball game featuring Muay Thai and run by drug lords. But the execution of it could have been better. Allowing weapons to be used really made it silly and stupid. I know I should not be thinking, but who would put themselves into that situation without much money or without having their family held hostage? Ultimately the best situation for this type of game where you win by scoring once (or dispatching all of your opponents) would be to hire very fast players who could score right off of a fast break (even with individuals trying to beat you up) since a good basketball player should be able to do a layup/dunk even with two or three guarding and not getting hit. With full disclosure I am a basketball fan – I have no idea whether that would predispose my thinking one way or the other for this movie.

One of the benefits of lower budget films is that much is done on location. You get to see a lot of city life and as a byproduct of the frenzied fight scenes I found myself enjoying the surroundings more (it is usually a bad sign for a film when you start paying attention to things like background people, possibly product placement and anything but what you are supposed to be focusing on). The attempt at creating a commentary on the social-economic conditions of these youths ultimately did not work because of a few plot threads that either made you to hate the drug lords yet put your sympathy on the one upcoming drug lord who recruited the protagonist and a few others who you get to see a bit of their daily lives.

The Lionsgate release had no issues though it does seem that there are dubtitles – so there is an English dub along with this as well. Special Features include a trailer for the film, additional Lionsgate trailers (Wushu, Death Warrior, Four Dragons, Bodyguard: A New Beginning, Never Surrender) and a Behind The Scenes which lasts around 11m 44s. The Behind The Scenes is in Thai with intercut scenes of the movie in English dub and even has some outtakes and behind the scene footage (where wires are shown). It has the director Thanakorn Pongsuwan talking about the origin of the story, the plot of the film and choice of actors. Also featured are: the producer Sangar Chatchairungruang (can't believe he stated that goal of the film was creating fun), the lead actor(s) Preeti Barameeanat (from Clash Band), actor Sam Kasem (Zing; in real life he is a Thai boxer who fights in Japan) and actor Arucha Tosawat (Tun).

The idea of integrating two of my favorite sports of martial arts and basket ball sounds like action heaven!! But this movie is poorly executed. The performers certainly do what they can, but no matter how their acting performances are or martial acrobatics. It just doesn't get off the ground to involve or genuinely excite you. The cinematography is all over the place, leaving you confused about who is who or simply feeling queasy from the all the shaking and spinning camera angles. The martial arts and acrobatics is nothing that you haven't seen before, even placed with the basketball skills and setting. Even the emotional subplots aren't enough to get you connected to the characters to care about what happens to them in the brutal "life and death" basket ball courts. Better to spend your time watching the other quality Thai action movies like Ong Bak, Chocolate, Raging Phoenix and Bangkok Knockout...

When I bought this movie from Amazon, it was mostly because of the cover and the costumer reviews I glanced through there. However, I did fail to pick up that this movie was about a weird combo of martial arts and basketball. Had I known that, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. And one of the major factors in the decision for buying it was that there are some really amazing fighting movies coming out of Thailand.

Now, having seen this movie, I sit here somewhat puzzled. The movie had a lot of fighting in it, as expected, and the scenes were quite nicely executed and brought on the screen. However, I do think the scene where one team was using metal pipes in the fight was a bit tame, especially because a lot of the time you could see that they weren't even aiming to hit the opponents with the pipes, they were just randomly striking at the air to make it look choreographed. That was sort of lame.

Then the whole thing with the basketball tournament mixed up with brutal fighting, well... That really didn't work out all that nicely for me. It was like a weird hybrid version of "Rollerball".

The story in "Fireball" is pretty thin, though I suspect that was to be expected of a movie of this caliber, as you watch this for the action and fighting, not the storyline and plot. Basically it is the story of a guy entering a brutal competition to raise money for his brothers brain surgery. And that is it, the rest is just action, fighting and violence.

"Fireball" is worth watching for the fight scenes, if nothing else, however, mind you, they are not on the same level as the ones seen in "Ong Bak".

The acting in the movie was alright, actually. I wasn't overly familiar with the actors and actresses here in the movie, but I do think they did do alright with their given roles and characters.

All in all, "Fireball" is an adequate movie if you are looking to be entertained in the way of constant action and fighting. However, if you like a movie with more depth and stuff to think about, this might not be the movie for you.